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Inside Pauline McLynn's career as Fr Ted star joins Corrie

Inside Pauline McLynn's career as Fr Ted star joins Corrie

Extra.ie​a day ago
Father Ted star Pauline McLynn is back on our TV screens with the Sligo woman joining the cast of British soap, Coronation Street.
Pauline plays the role of Maggie, who is the interfering mother of fellow newcomer Ben Driscoll.
The pair will make their debut to the Cobbles, alongside Eva Price (played by Catherine Tydesley), who returns to the street after seven years.
Ben's two sons and Eva's daughter, Suzie, will also be joining the cast, with Ben and Eva set to become the landlords of the pub, The Rovers Return, in October.
With an acting portfolio boasting 40 years, Pauline has been involved some of the best of Irish and British TV. Extra.ie take a look at some of her biggest roles….
Despite it being one of her earliest TV appearances, Pauline will always be synonymous as the iconic, tea-pushing housekeeper in Fr Ted, Mrs Doyle.
The now-63-year-old was only in her early thirties when she played the role of Mrs Doyle, with make-up and costume making her look far older than her actual age.
Pauline starred alongside the late Dermot Morgan and Jack Kelly as well as Ardal O'Hanlon. The show ran from 1995 to 1998 with Pauline winning Top TV Comedy Actress in 1996 at the British Comedy Award. Despite it being one of her earliest TV appearances, Pauline will always be synonymous as the iconic, tea-pushing housekeeper in Fr Ted, Mrs Doyle. Pic: Channel 4
Pauline went on to become Tip Haddem in Jennifer Saunders' Jam & Jerusalem, which also starred Joanna Lumley and Dawn French.
The show ran for three seasons from 2006 to 2009 and centred around a Women's Guild, which Tip worked as the receptionist at. Tip
The Irish woman is married to farmer Colin, but the second season sees their relationship going through a rocky patch. Pic: G. McDonnell / VIPIRELAND.COM **IRISH RIGHTS ONLY** *** Local Caption *** Pauline McLynn
Another beloved show Pauline appeared in is the British version of Shameless, where she took on the role of Libby Croker. Pauline appeared on the show in the seventh and eight series and is the third major love interest to head of the family, Frank Gallagher.
The relationship is quite serious with the pair even moving in together for a time — that is after Libby has been released from prison after she was jailed for inciting a riot.
Speaking about the role in 2010, Pauline admitted it was a different role for her, as she revealed to the Irish Independent that she bared all for the show. Another beloved show Pauline appeared in is the British version of Shameless, where she took on the role of Libby Croker. Pic: Channel 4
Pauline joined the cast of EastEnders in 2014, and played the role of Yvonne Cotton who was the mother of Charlie Cotton (played by Declan Bennett) and the former daughter-in-law of Dot Branning (June Brown).
Speaking at the time, Pauline branded EastEnders her 'favourite soap' and branded co-star June a 'legend' who she was 'privileged' to act alongside.
Yvonne initially arrived to Walford to speak to Dot about her missing grandson and was originally a recurring character though after storylines escalated, she became a permanent character.
Pauline called time on her role in January 2015; however, did come back for one show in May of the same year when she gave evidence against Dot during the murder trial of Nick Cotton. Pic: BBC
In 2022, Pauline was reunited on the screen with her Father Ted co-star Ardal O'Hanlon as the pair both appeared on Sky original series, Rosie Molloy Gives Up Everything.
Ardal O'Hanlon and Pauline McLynn star alongside Sheridan Smith in the hilarious comedy that follows the titular character of Rosie Molloy as she attempts to give up all that is deemed to be bad for her – smoking, alcohol, Terry's Chocolate Orange, Xanax, Adderall, caffeine and more.
Previously speaking to Extra.ie, Pauline admitted she had no idea her former colleague had auditioned for the show and was 'shocked' it had finally happened all those years later. Rosie Molloy Gives up Everything. Pic: © Hartswood Films ©Sky UK Limited © Tom Jackson
Other iconic shows Pauline has appeared on include Colin Farrell-starring Ballykissangel as well as Cork comedy The Young Offenders.
In 2022, she appeared as Eileen O'Driscoll in the four-episode series of Holding, which was a TV adaptation of Graham Norton's book of the same name.
She has also had a role in Doctor Who, not to forget the realm of movie credits she has to her name, such as Johnny English Strikes Again, Deadly Cuts and Gypo — the later which earned her an award at the 2006 Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in the Special Mention: Best Video category.
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Five For Your Radar: Leeside DJs, Freakier Friday, Kilkenny Arts
Five For Your Radar: Leeside DJs, Freakier Friday, Kilkenny Arts

Irish Examiner

time3 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

Five For Your Radar: Leeside DJs, Freakier Friday, Kilkenny Arts

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Cowardice of C-listers on Celeb SAS: WDW is bad enough – but the bigger failure was the ‘interrogation' of Rebecca Loos
Cowardice of C-listers on Celeb SAS: WDW is bad enough – but the bigger failure was the ‘interrogation' of Rebecca Loos

The Irish Sun

time3 hours ago

  • The Irish Sun

Cowardice of C-listers on Celeb SAS: WDW is bad enough – but the bigger failure was the ‘interrogation' of Rebecca Loos

Read on for Ally's thoughts on MasterChef's return and the biggest TV lies and delusions of the month ALLY ROSS Cowardice of C-listers on Celeb SAS: WDW is bad enough – but the bigger failure was the 'interrogation' of Rebecca Loos THE worst thing about Love Island contestants? They never go away. Advertisement 7 Channel 4's Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins has been lumbered with Love Island contestants Credit: PA 7 While the heroic Special Forces instructors are quite rightly looking for 'people with grit' Channel 4's production team are ruthlessly hunting down over-sharing exhibitionists Credit: PA They either reappear on the winter version or they start polluting every other reality format in the schedule with their me, me, me schtick. With TV's worst-affected show currently being Channel 4's Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, which has lumbered itself with Adam Collard, Chloe Burrows and Tasha Ghouri, who are convinced the public know them best for. . . . 'being a bit of a lothario', 'snogging lots of boys' and just generally ­acting the a***hole on Love Island. A spectacular delusion, given 99.99 per cent of the public probably wouldn't recognise them if they abseiled into their bathtubs wearing a name tag. Which only goes to highlight the conflict of priorities at the heart of this show. Advertisement Pointlessly famous Because, while Foxy, Billy and the heroic Special Forces instructors are quite rightly looking for 'people with grit and determination who can make their country proud', Channel 4's production team are ruthlessly hunting down over-sharing exhibitionists who will bury their country's reputation under 100 tonnes of self-pity and too much bloody information. Just how badly the SAS boys lost that battle of wills can best be gauged by this year's line-up. As well as the three Love Island contestants, others wearing the tell-tale smirk of the pointlessly famous include: Louie Spence, S Club's ­Hannah Spearritt, Harry Clark from The Traitors, 'Peru Two' drug mule Michaella McCollum and the compulsory drag queen whose real name is Thomas George Graeme Hibbitts, so you can probably understand why the poor frightened little soul decided to call himself Bimini Bon-Boulash. Boxer Conor Benn is also present, along with footballers Troy Deeney and Adebayo Akinfenwa who should probably be slightly wary about 'TV personality and yoga instructor' Rebecca Loos, last seen bringing a pig to climax on Channel 5's The Farm, back in 2005, who remains stuck in a Catch-22 situation all of her own making. She ­desperately wants to move on from her alleged affair with David Beckham, but cannot shut the hell up about him. Advertisement A problem that wasn't helped by instructor Chris Oliver, who invited Loos to talk about him again, during an 'interrogation', with the words: 'I'd be interested to get your take on it.' But then missed a trick, once she'd finally exhausted herself on the subject, by ­failing to add: 'No, not ­Beckham, I was talking about the Channel 5 pig.' Celeb SAS Who Dares Wins full line up revealed with ex Premier League footballer, pop icon and THREE Love Islanders Say what you like about her, though, Rebecca Loos is far from the most brittle member of this feeble celebrity line-up which started to disintegrate almost as soon as the opening credits were done. First to go was Hannah Spearritt, who didn't even reach for the third ad break, let alone the stars. She was swiftly followed by Louie Spence and then the two Love Island girls who got the shortest shrift of all, from Chris Oliver, after voluntarily withdrawing on the way to the Hang Tough ­challenge. 'What do you mean VW?' he screamed. 'You haven't fookin' done anything yet.' Advertisement You could tell the production team were also livid and probably angry with themselves, for choosing such ­obvious quitters, as they decided to replay the ­contestants' opening words of defiance straight after they handed in their armbands. Hannah Spearritt: 'I'm pretty determined. I wouldn't say I give up easily.' Louie Spence: 'I'm a ­survivor.' Chloe Burrows: 'It's really hard for me to say what it would take for me to VW.' 7 Chloe just couldn't go on after struggling on the climb Advertisement 7 Tasha gave up just a few minutes after Chloe 7 Rebecca Loos cannot shut the hell up about Beckham Credit: PA It is? Then I'll say it for her. It took a tiny slope. Not even a hill, a slope was just too much of an obstacle to overcome, so Chloe quit and hopefully exited public life, just as John Barrowman did last year. 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'We're gonna need a bigger cinema': 50 years on from the release of Jaws
'We're gonna need a bigger cinema': 50 years on from the release of Jaws

Irish Examiner

time3 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

'We're gonna need a bigger cinema': 50 years on from the release of Jaws

It was the troubled movie production that ran months over schedule and by more than twice its budget. It didn't help that problems with its mechanical sharks led to the shooting of Jaws being dubbed 'Flaws' by some crew members. But a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg, aged 27 and with just one other movie credit to his name, took the shortcomings that plagued his shark thriller and turned them into a movie-making miracle. From its iconic 'dum dum' score by John Williams, to its distinct and colourful characters, to its sense of tension and toying with its audience, Jaws became the most successful movie of all time when it was released in 1975. It set Spielberg on course to become one of the most celebrated filmmakers ever as Jaws became a punctuation point in the history of cinema. On August 29, the tale of a great white shark who plagued the town of Amity will return to Irish cinemas to mark its 50th anniversary. Commonly regarded as the first summer blockbuster and based on Peter Benchley's bestselling novel, Jaws sees the small community turned to chaos when a shark makes its home offshore, munching his way through the local and tourist population. Police chief Brody (Roy Scheider) joins forces with a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a shark hunter (Robert Shaw) to find the deadly predator. It shouldn't have worked out this way. On a troubled production that ran massively over budget amid numerous issues, the three mechanical sharks named Bruce would frequently break down. An early suggestion that a live great white would be trained for the film had long been dismissed and shelved, but Bruce's mechanical challenges would frequently delay production. Spielberg's decision to bring authenticity by filming in open waters also proved a nightmare. Seasickness plagued the cast and crew, the unpredictable weather was a continuity challenge, and other boats not connected to the film would drift into shots. The advertisement for Jaws at the Capitol cinema in Cork in the Evening Echo in March 1976. Stressed but determined, Spielberg turned to the growing movie-making skills and instincts that would later endear him to worldwide audiences through films including Close Encounters, ET and Saving Private Ryan. It was a massive gamble that somehow worked, says Dr Barry Monahan, senior lecturer in the Department of Film and Screen Media at UCC. 'Some people say, if the shark had worked, it would have been a hopeless film, because it was the fact that we couldn't see it that left it to the imagination,' says Monahan. 'Without that footage, the suggestion of what the terror was was far more potent than what it would have been if we'd seen the rubber shark. That might be true, but still you had to know where to cut, and still you had to know how much of that you could get away with without satisfying some itch that the audience has.' What the young filmmaker brought to the movie, he adds, was an innate gift for knowing how to engage an audience. 'He had a sense of story. Like every great storyteller, he could put himself in the audience's shoes and know what the audience was hoping to see next. And once you're there, you're on to a winner. If you know what your spectator wants to see next, you can either give it to them, or you can deny them that, and they are eating out of your hands, depending on which of those, the postponement of satisfaction or the delivery of a satisfaction, keeps them enticed enough.' Instead of disaster, the film that ran more than 100 days and more than twice the budget over its production schedule resonated massively with audiences - and still feels fresh as its 50th anniversary release date in Irish cinemas approaches. Spielberg, aided and abetted by the brilliant work of film editor Verna Fields and the cast and production team, pulled the challenging production from the jaws of defeat and used their skills to build a sense of intensity and tension that still works on screen today. Leaning into the playbook of filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock while bringing their own creativity to the table, the filmmakers used clever editing and strong performances to deliver a true original, spooking audiences with glimpses of a shark fin in the water. 'They didn't get the shots they needed on a day-by-day basis,' says Monahan, adding that Fields' collaboration with Spielberg is one of the film's great victories. 'Everything she did, everything that's praised about that film, from the music, which follows an editing rhythm, from the sequential development of characters that is entirely about the editing development, from the the use of shock-factor shots and the development of tension, a la Hitchcock, all of that was Verna Fields.' Steven Spielberg had plenty teething problems during the making of Jaws. (Photo by Evening Standard/) Released in US cinemas in June 1975, Jaws was in uncharted waters in a world where the summer blockbuster hadn't yet become a trend with audiences. But Universal Pictures pushed awareness of the film through a robust marketing campaign and gave Jaws a wide release, allowing audiences to recommend it through word of mouth. Peppered with great one-liners including 'you're gonna need a bigger boat' and 'you open the beaches on the 4th of July, it's like ringing the dinner bell for Christ's sakes', the movie started resonating with film fans as soon as it hit the big screen. Back in the days when film companies had to physically transport film reels across the Atlantic, the blockbuster finally made its way to Cork in March 1976 when it opened at the Capitol cinema. Jaws captured the public zeitgeist and became the biggest film in box-office history, taking an enormous $260 million on its initial release. It made studios realise that an event movie could capture a wide audience, and the summer blockbuster was born. 'One of the big things that the blockbusters brought back, that the young directors like Scorsese and Coppola and Spielberg and Lucas started peddling, was the thrill and the fun,' observes Monahan. 'People would come out of the cinema and tell people that this was worth seeing for the right kind of reasons, with the right kind of enthusiasm, and that's what shaped the things that we would later call blockbusters as we moved into the late '70s and '80s.' Speaking in a new documentary for National Geographic called Jaws@50: The Definitive Inside Story, Spielberg still recalls the sense of stress he felt during the production. 'We didn't have the words PTSD in those days, and I had consistent nightmares about directing Jaws for years afterwards. It was, logistically, I think the most difficult movie I think I'll ever make,' he says. But seeing how it still enthrals audiences 50 years later, he spoke of his delight at the public response at the documentary's premiere. 'Fifty years after its initial release, making Jaws remains a seminal experience for every single one of us, and five decades has done nothing to dim the memories of what remains one of the most overwhelming, exciting, terrifying and rewarding experiences of my entire career.' Jaws returns to Irish cinemas on August 29

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